


start back at one

by thir13enth



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post S6
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-14
Updated: 2018-07-14
Packaged: 2019-06-10 12:00:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15291060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thir13enth/pseuds/thir13enth
Summary: With his return, there’s so much to catch up on, but maybe they don’t need words for their feelings. — shallura, post s6.





	start back at one

**Author's Note:**

> something I intended to write four weeks ago but never got around to finishing until now.

She hasn’t had a proper conversation with Shiro ever since.

The journey to Earth doesn’t take very long. With Keith’s maturing relationship with the Black Lion and Shiro’s guidance, the team makes it to their home planet in just under a varga.

The entire team is greeted with open arms and happy tears, and Allura’s heart goes out to everyone reuniting with their families and friends. As Hunk works with Coran on the construction of the next and more glorious iteration of the Castle of Lions, Pidge starts coding new functions onto a new prosthetic arm for Shiro, Lance is busy with all his nieces and nephews, and Keith is catching up with Shiro for as much as he can about well, everything.

And Allura? Allura thinks it’s nice that she has some time alone. She still hasn’t been able to process and clearly think through what has happened in the last series of quintants, and she really needs to before she can properly handle the next phase of Voltron’s work.

But for now, her mind is tired, and she hasn’t made any progress with her emotions, so Allura occupies herself with the wonders of Earth — the pink and purple flowers, the deep blue oceans, the white silver-lined clouds, the yellow-orange of the setting sun…

It’s exactly as Shiro described it to her. Breathtaking and beautiful, with colors beyond imagination. A moment not just to witness but to _experience_.

Somehow, she remembers this, exactly as how he said it, even if he spoke those words long before…

“Allura?” his voice comes behind her, as if summoned by thought alone.

She turns around. She hasn’t heard her name in his voice in a long time. It seems nearly years since he’s called her anything but Princess.

“Shiro,” she replies, in a practiced voice. She tries not to sound alarmed. “What are you doing here? You should be resting.”

He shrugs, giving her a sheepish grin. “I got bored,” he says lightly, before his eyes soften. “And I wanted to talk to you.”

Hearing this makes her heart flutter — but as much she wants to talk to him, she’s not sure she has all of her thoughts together just yet. She opens her mouth, but then closes it again.

“I see,” she answers instead.

“Sorry that it took this long,” he apologizes. “So many things were going on, and I felt like every opportunity I got to try to catch you was stolen.”

“Yes,” she agrees, but she knows she’s been purposefully avoiding him.

“How are you?”

And it’s such a simple question with such a complex answer. He knows it too, and he laughs to himself, apologizing. “Sorry, I know that’s a big question.”

“No, no,” she assures him. “I should be asking you that.”

“We have a lot to catch up on then,” he says.

She gives him a small smile. “We do. But it might take a long while, don’t you think?”

He returns the smile. “I’m happy with whatever gives me more time to spend with you.”

Silence falls over them again. Shiro looks like he wants to embrace her — his arm swings up past his hips but then once he sees her poised expression, he lets his arm drop back, tucking his hand to the side of his leg, his fingers holding onto the seam of his pants. He plays it off like he was smoothing out some wrinkles, but she notices anyway.

She also notices that his face falls, the shadows lengthening over his cheeks as his eyes turn downcast and a frown settles on his lips.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” he apologizes. “I know you went through a lot, and that the team went through a lot, and all that time I wasn’t there.”

Allura’s eyebrows furrow, and her eyes flutter closed as she takes a steady breath in and out. This is not what she wants to hear from him.

“I didn’t mean to leave the team in such distress,” Shiro continues. “Keith was telling me he was completely unprepared to take my place as the Black Lion, and that even if I had told him and trained him earlier, he would never be ready for how suddenly I disappeared.” He pauses, and she can hear his face turning toward her. “In my absence, I know there was a lot of rearranging. All the teamwork had to start from scratch again. And—”

“Stop apologizing,” she interrupts him in a snap. She looks up at his guilt-ridden eyes, and immediately regrets her tone, covering her mouth with a hand and turning away from him. “I’m sorry,” she then tells him, once she re-modulates her voice. “I… I don’t think I’m ready to talk to you yet.”

“Hey.” He steps to her side, gingerly placing a hand on her shoulder. When she doesn’t shrug it off, he lets his palm rest completely over her skin. “It’s okay to be upset with me.”

She shakes her head. “No, no,” she counters. “I’m not upset with you. I’m just…” and she trails off as she finds the words. “I don’t even know where to start.”

His eyes shift to the side, and she sees his bottom lip curl under his teeth, as if he’s biting back words he wants to say.

They slip past his lips anyway.

“Can we start with you and me?” he asks, his gaze returning to her. “I just want to know if we’re still where we were before… everything.”

_Where we were before… everything._ Did he mean the long conversations under the stars telling each other about what they missed most about their home planets? Did he mean the subtle teasing under the table at dinner time? Did he mean the quiet sleep-in mornings when she’d find herself waking up with her hip under his heavy thigh? Did he mean weary post-mission afternoons when they barely had enough energy to get into the shower, much less remove themselves from each other’s arms?

“I understand if you need time,” he says, when her silence extends past comfort. He lifts his hand from her shoulder. “I’ll be here whenever you’re ready.”

Her heart gives a start. She takes his wrist before he moves any further away.

At the core of it, he’s right. There’s only so many chances to have this conversation. If she missed it this time, there is no telling when she would next be able to talk to him, just the two of them.

And she really doesn’t want to delay it anymore. Already, the hole in her chest is growing wider by every minute she avoids him. She hates not being able to see him. She hates not being able to talk to him. She hates not being able to hug him tight, kiss his lips, _breathe him in and feel like she is home._

“It’s not you,” she begins. “You didn’t do anything wrong. I just…” A hard rock in her throat forms, and she swallows it down. “I betrayed you,” she confesses.

He looks up at her, meeting her eyes. “You didn’t.”

She can’t read his eyes. They’re dark and intense, and she loses her words and her thoughts in them.

“I did,” she argues, blinking out the blurriness in her eyes. She starts to blabber. “I didn’t realize he wasn’t you, and I thought you had changed. I thought he was you.”

She watches him for any signs of anger or upset, but he doesn’t show any. “Not many people realized he wasn’t me,” he reminds her.

She shakes her head, refusing that excuse. “I fell out of love with you. I stopped loving you and I moved on without you. I didn’t ever think we’d come back to this, and I didn’t ever think I’d think about you again like this.”

“People fall in and out of love,” he says, shrugging it off.

“Yes, but I told him that I didn’t love him anymore and I broke his heart,” she continues, taking his hand in both of hers, interlacing her fingers between his. “Then I fell in love with Lotor and I broke his heart again. I broke his heart twice. I made him cry. And now I know he wasn’t you, but I still feel like I broke _your_ heart twice, and that I made _you_ cry.”

He laughs softly. “Why do you keep trying to convince me that I should be upset with you?”

She doesn’t realize that this is what she’s trying to do, but now that he’s said it, the cloud over her emotions suddenly clear.

That’s it. She feels guilty for everything she’s done and she’s worried that if he finds out, he’ll be upset and never want anything to do with her ever again. This is why she’s been avoiding him. This is why it’s taken her this long to figure out what was eating at her heart.

How is that he can always find her?

“You _should_ be upset with me,” she replies.

“I’m not,” he assures her. He takes his free hand and lifts her chin up to him, watching her eyes. “Are you upset with me?” he asks softly.

She shakes her head. “No,” she says, taken aback by his question. “Not at all. You didn’t do anything wrong. None of what happened was your fault.”

He smiles. “Exactly.” His fingers move up her jaw and tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. “That’s exactly why I forgive you.”

She swallows, her eyes slowly surveying up his sturdy shoulders and neck to his new head of white before stopping at his soft black gaze. When their eyes meet, he gives her a gentle smile.

“Can we start over?” he asks. “From wherever we left off?”

She nods, replying almost breathlessly. “Yes.”

His other hand escapes from between her fingers, following up her right forearm before slipping over her elbow to settle on her waist. He doesn’t ask it, but she steps slightly into him. She’s surprised by how automatically her hands reach for him, and she carefully lets only the tips of her fingers touch him, feeling the warmth emanating from his chest.

“Can I kiss you?”

“Yes,” she says, barely a whisper — but for how little distance there is between them, she doesn’t need to be any louder.

He smiles, his eyes dropping to her lips. His eyelashes are as long as she remembers them.

The last time she was ever this close to anyone…

“I kissed Lotor,” she blurts, another pang of guilt coursing through her. “I made love to him.”

The smile on his face doesn’t fade. “I don’t care.”

And maybe this is all she needed to hear from him — that he’ll have her however she is and has been — because that’s when all her doubts and regrets fade from her mind, overshadowed by the growing hunger for his lips.

“Now,” he murmurs over her lips. “Where do we begin?”

**Author's Note:**

> y'all know where to hmu:
> 
> tumblr @ ahumanintraining  
> twitter @ napsbeforesleep


End file.
